


Gold and Steel

by ellorgast



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Manga), Sailor Moon - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Complete, F/M, Gen, Shitennou, Shitennou Forums Ficathon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-12
Updated: 2014-06-12
Packaged: 2018-02-04 08:38:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1772758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellorgast/pseuds/ellorgast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A grizzled blacksmith is interrupted by some unexpected visitors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gold and Steel

The village of Windsbreath had seated itself very neatly in a valley that was just shy of hidden from the world. The nearest city was not exactly distant, and the King’s highway cut neatly through the woods only a mile to the south, but few travelers ever thought to turn from the broad, well-traveled path onto the grassy, lumpy one that wandered uncertainly through the woods and up into farmland. Not very much happened there, and its residents were pleased to keep it that way.

Perched high on the hill at the village’s tail end, a weathered structure kept watch over Windsbreath. At night, it grumbled and hissed to itself, its open door glowing and puffing out thick plumes of smoke. The villagers did not trouble themselves with this din. After all, they tilled their land and furnished their homes with the tools that the smith’s forge produced. And it was said, by the more superstitious among them, that many things the smith produced were imbued with special properties. Old Mr. Johnson’s cabbage crop had been failing the year that he ordered a new shovel from the smith, and now they were plentiful, with leaves the size of an elephant’s ear. Even Mrs. Wilson insisted that her custard pie had never tasted so delicious as when she baked it in her new pie plate, and she was always sure to bring the smith an extra piece to show her gratitude. 

But now, in the late morning, the blacksmith’s forge slumbered in the sunlight that crested over the mountain’s peak, rumbling with a deep snore that drifted sedately over the valley. Or rather, its inhabitant snored inside, muffled only slightly by the smithy’s sturdy walls.

A villager would know better than to knock on the forge’s door at this hour. Thus the forge could be certain, as a fist politely struck its front, that the visitor was most decidedly not from around here. The snoring continued unabated inside, easily drowning out the gentle tap. 

The visitor was persistent, however, even if her knocks were a touch too polite. She rapped at the door again, much more forcefully. There was a brief break in the snoring. A third knock, this time taking advantage of the brief silence, sounded on the door.

The snoring did not resume. Instead, it was replaced by an incoherent grumble, and the heavy sound of footfalls. A series of sharp glass-like clinks could be heard, as though a heavy bottle had just been kicked into several others. The door was ripped open, and in the darkness of the forge, a broad figure took its place.

“What,” he growled curtly. It was rather more a statement than a question.

“Hello,” his visitor said, as though she was addressing a member of a human race and not this beastly creature. He was difficult to see yet, as she stood in the glorious morning sun and he in the shade, but the faint outline of his hair seemed to be a mane of wild curls, and two dark eyes glistened like polished stones. “Are you the blacksmith?”

“‘Course I bloody well am. What sort of hour do you call this?”

The newcomer blinked at him for a moment, then glanced at the village below her, as if making sure that it was still broad daylight. “I believe I call it morning, sir.”

“Don’t ‘sir’ me. Come back at a normal time of day.”

He moved to swing the heavy door shut, but the visitor stepped bravely forward. “Ah... I’m afraid I am in a bit of a hurry.”

“That’s your problem, isn’t it?”

“I can pay.”

“I’m happy for you.”

“In gold.”

The blacksmith, who was in the process of slamming the door in her face, had to grab at the door now to halt its trajectory. He slowly drew it back again. “Gold?”

“As much as you require.”

His dark eyes glistened in consideration. There was no shortage of business for a blacksmith in Windsbreath, but farmers were hardly a wealthy lot, and often as not he was paid in pies. He looked over his visitor, a tiny slip of a woman who hardly looked fit to be traveling the countryside on her own. Her dress was simple and practical, almost studiously unremarkable in every sense, and did not belie any sort of wealth. Her hair was short and neat--an unusual style on a woman, but it did suit her. But there was a certain poise in the way that she carried herself. A sense of deep calm that came only to those who stood solidly on the podium of wealth and class.

“That so? What sort of job do you need doing that’s so urgent?”

The woman’s blue eyes flicked briefly to the side, taking in the village below and the bustle of people moving within clear view of the smithy. They were deeply intelligent, those eyes. “May I show you inside?”

He gave her a grin, the prospect of money dramatically lightening his mood. “Keep your promise on that gold, and you can show me anything you like, anywhere you like.”

He stood aside to grant her entry, and the woman found herself standing in the near-darkness of the forge. A few very small windows set high in the walls allowed a scant amount of sunlight to stream in. The place smelled strongly of woodsmoke and alcohol. 

Her host slammed the heavy door into place behind her, and crossed the smithy, kicking a few glass ale bottles--undoubtedly the source of the noise earlier--out of his way as he did so. He located a lamp and lit it. In its warm glow, she could now see that his torso was bare and tanned. His face was rough with stubble and his eyes perhaps were not as clear and sober as she would have expected of a man of such renowned skill. He set the lamp down. “Name’s Nathrach, but you’ll know that if you’ve been talking to folks down the hill. What shall I be addressing you as?”

“Amelia will do, thank you.”

“Alright then, your ladyship, let’s see what you’ve got.”

She did not miss the title he gave her, far too formal for her humble dress, but nevertheless the woman wordlessly produced a small bundle from her satchel. She untied it, the bundle’s wrappings proving to be a handkerchief, and inside were two small, delicate objects. These she passed to the blacksmith.

Nathrach held the open handkerchief up to the light. It was clear that the two objects were meant to be whole. It seemed to be part of some sort of mechanical device. What sort of device that was, and what function it served, he could not say. He raised a dark eyebrow at the woman. “Strange thing for a lady to be carrying across the countryside.”

She continued to look at him serenely, not at all unsettled by his comment. “Can you fix it?”

“Would help if I knew what I was fixing.”

Amelia, as she claimed she was called, remained still as a statue. Slight though she may be, he had to admit that the girl seemed to be made of ice. “That is hardly relevant, is it?”

He turned over one of the broken pieces carefully, studying its form, its patina, its weight. “It might be. Different objects have different requirements. A tool must be strong, reliable. A serving dish must shine brightly to improve the appeal of the food. Now, a weapon--” he fixed his dark gaze on her, “must be merciless.”

They regarded each other through the thin light, and though outside, birds could be heard calling one another and the voices of villagers were carried up to them by the wind, inside the forge held its fiery breath. 

Amelia tilted her head inquisitively. “What are you implying, sir?”

The blacksmith looked her over, and now his eyes did not look at all as unfocused as they had been moments ago. “You dress like a milkmaid but bear yourself like a noblewoman. A noblewoman who travels alone, who has no fear of a man twice her size, who carries strange machinery with her. And you are all too eager to pay more than is necessary so you can be out of here quickly. Incidentally, the village has a perfectly comfortable inn, but I suppose you’ll have noticed already that it is occupied by a small group of imperial soldiers at the moment.”

The young woman did not balk, but her stance shifted slightly. She was keeping the exit within sight. “And why,” she said carefully, “have you not yet summoned those soldiers?”

Nathrach leaned one arm casually against the workbench beside him, as though conversing with a friend. “Because, Lunarian, if your plan is to use your magic to slay me where I stand, this would be the time to do it. And I would rather save myself the trouble of fixing your mysterious little thingie here if I’m going to be turned to dust either way.”

“But you do not believe that I intend to do such a thing.”

“You tell me.”

“And if I do not?”

“Well, that depends on what I’m fixing, now doesn’t it?”

The woman took a long, steadying breath, considering this beast of a man before her. His manners were atrocious and she could smell the stale alcohol on him from here, but all who had pointed her way to this forge had mentioned both the blacksmith’s skill and his exceptional kindness, and when she looked into his rough-shaven face, she did not detect any malice. “It is not a weapon.”

“Don’t suppose you can prove that, can you?”

“I am afraid that you will not understand its function, even if I do show you.”

“We may be born without your magic and your wealth, your ladyship, but we are not born stupid as well.”

For the first time, Amelia faltered. “I--I did not mean...”

“Yes, I am sure you think me a well-learned barbarian.” He gave her a smile that seemed good-natured, as though he was sharing a dark joke. 

The dark-haired woman reached into her satchel and produced a most foreign object. It was like a glove--a fine lady’s kid leather glove--but all around where the wrist and the back of the hand would have fit was some sort of very delicate instrument. It had a glistening round face, like a timepiece, but the face did not show the time, and all around it were buttons and knobs and bits of metal that did not lend themselves to a clock at all. “It is not a weapon,” she said firmly. “It is for communication.”

“Has the Lunar world advanced so far beyond us that speaking is no longer in practice?”

“Communication over long distances,” she clarified. “Very long distances.”

“Such as from one planet to another.”

She watched him, betraying no emotion. “If one must.”

“So if I were to, say, take it apart, I would find nothing that could split the Earth in two.”

Her fingers curled protectively around the device, but the thin line of her mouth remained steadfast. “No, sir, you would not find anything of the sort.”

“Then you will not mind leaving it with me overnight, then, will you?”

There was a hiss of drawn breath. “To what end? To show the soldiers down the hill?”

He shrugged, clearly enjoying himself. “Oh, I hardly think they’d have a use for it.”

She was less than amused. “What, then?”

“Call it a professional interest as a blacksmith. And” his eyes glittered with dark humor “as an Earthling who would rather not see his planet blown up.”

Amelia grasped the communicator close to herself. It was her connection with home, both in a literal sense and in its familiarity. Losing it would leave her helpless. But losing it into the wrong hands could be devastating. 

“You are a Lunarian seeking help on Earth,” Nathrach reminded her. “You will find no better offer than that.”

Reluctantly, the woman set the glove on the workbench. For a moment, she did not look like the confident woman who had so boldly invaded his shop, but an innocent girl forced to relinquish something dear. But then she straightened her back, settled her features, and said, “the gold you may have after you have fixed it.”

Nathrach held the glove up in a sliver of light, inspecting its gleaming components. “Naturally.”

“And...” Amelia cast around her. The shop had only one small bed, tucked in the corner far from the forge. “Am I to camp in the woods? Given that I would like to avoid the inn.”

The dark-haired man sighed. “I will speak to Mrs. Wilson for you. She does so enjoy company while she bakes her pies.”

***

That night, the forge remained still, and the blacksmith was not to be found, for he had climbed atop its sturdy roof and laid beneath the stars. The soldiers down the hill would call him a traitor for even considering the idea. To help a Lunarian, probably a spy. Maybe she was no killer herself, but that did not mean she did not work on behalf of them. Everybody knew the stories. Everybody knew what terrors a Lunarian could bring.

But to leave the girl to her fate was probably to sentence her to death, or imprisonment, or worse. Earth may not have shared the Moon’s magic or technology, but it knew how to share its cruelty.

It was a question of right and wrong, and right and wrong did not know loyalty. The stars glittered in agreement. 

When he lit the forge’s fires, it puffed its hot breath in approval.

***

A storm raged over Windsbreath. True to its name, the valley became a furious wind tunnel, trees groaning as the tempest pushed them nearly flat. Lightning lit the sky as bright as midday, thunder causing the mountains to shudder. The smithy crouched low under the hard drum of rain, breathing its hot breath up at the clouds as if to spite them.

Inside, the forge was hot as ever, and the blacksmith’s hammers were loud enough to answer the thunder’s shouts. It had been over a month since he sent the Lunarian who called herself Amelia on her way, and so far the Earth had not been split in two.

There was a knock on the door.

Not the sharp but polite rap of the dark-haired woman with the interesting glove. This was a thump, as with a strong fist.

He paused in his work. It was late, far later than any villager normally visited. Though they were surely not sleeping well in this weather, they would be crazy to leave the comfort of their homes just to see about some horseshoes. 

There was another series of thumps, followed by a crack of thunder and the rapid-fire taps of sideways rain. Whoever it was, they were brave or insane to be standing outside his door, and he had better find out which it was.

It was, in fact, a woman.

“I’m sorry, yours was the only light on!” she tried to shout over the roar of rain, but was interrupted by a crack of thunder.

“Come again?” he shouted back, leaning out the door to hear her better, only to be thoroughly whipped in the face by rain.

“I said, yours was--” thunder cracked again, and she ran both hands up her face, pulling away the tendrils of hair that stuck to it, in frustration. “Oh bother. Can I come in?”

Nathrach, at this point, was discovering the same problem with his own hair. “I can’t hear you! You’d better come in!”

With the smithy’s heavy door closed, the storm again became muffled, and the two soaked strangers could see each other in the light for the first time.

There he stood, a workman in only his dark trousers and heavy boots. His long dark curls clung to his unshaven face. Rainwater and sweat beaded on his broad shoulders, trickling over tanned skin and the sort of muscles that came only from daily labor.

There she stood, a tall stranger in a dress that clung close to her wet body. Her long dark curls clung to her flushed cheeks. Rainwater trickled... well, everywhere, especially in a trail on the floor from the door to where she stood, but most importantly over her heaving, barely-contained breasts. 

It was warm in the forge, but with the strange woman’s intrusion, it had just turned warmer still. “Sorry if I disturbed you! I tried the inn, but nobody answered.”

“The owner’ll have drunk himself to sleep by now. Not even the thunder could wake him. Would you like--” for me to run my tongue all over you “a blanket?”

She looked down at herself. “That would be quite helpful, yes.”

He assumed that she had responded to the spoken part of his question and not the unspoken one, and moved to strip the blanket from his bed. She appreciatively watched the muscles flex in his exposed back as he bent and straightened. “Do you have a name?” he asked conversationally. “And also a death wish?”

She chuckled, all warmth even under the damp. “My name is Madina, and no. I stopped along the highway to camp for the night, thinking the trees would be enough to shelter me. What’s a little rain, right?”

He handed her the blanket, and was given reprieve enough from the sight of her bosoms to see that she had very pretty green eyes. 

He never stood a chance.

***

“I don’t know if I’m ready.” 

“It’s okay. The first time is always rough.”

“You promise to hold on tight?”

“I’ll be right here the whole time.”

“Alright. Here I go.” Madina swung the hammer around with both hands and struck the glowing bar with all her might. Nathrach could not help but laugh heartily. He held the cold end of the bar between his tongs, and had felt the jolt of her strike all the way up his arms. She was the softest, curviest woman he could imagine, but she had the strength of a horse.

“Did I do it?” The brunette lady asked nervously, wiping sweat from her forehead. 

The glowing yellow metal had squished as though made of clay. “Congratulations. You flatten like a pro.”

“Only because I have the very best teacher.” She rested the hammer against her shoulder, and in the thin streaks of sunlight, glowing with sweat, her hair a mess of golden-brown curls tied behind her head, she looked like a goddess. A goddess of what, he could not yet say.

The goddess Madina spent two weeks at the forge. By night she shared his bed, by day his work. She carried as much firewood as he did, could handle tools as deftly. He kept much later hours than she was used to, and so she would lay in bed, hair tousled from lovemaking, and watch him work until her eyes could no longer remain open. Then it was he who woke in the early afternoon to the sound of her movement. 

“What are you doing?” He asked groggily. He did not drink half as much now, with her here, as he once had, but in her presence he often felt drunk all the same. 

“It’s a surprise,” she informed him, without turning around. He could see that she had cleared half of his workbench, had laid clean flour sacks over it, but she hid the rest with her extremely distracting backside. Where normally the forge had settled into warm ash, it was now hot with red embers.

When she did at last turn, she was holding a pie plate--one he immediately recognized as his own craft, for he knew every object that his hands made--with a second, identical plate turned upside-down over it as a lid. Then she did the most bizarre thing imaginable--she placed the lot of it inside the heart of the forge. 

Nathrach contemplated whether he had invited a crazy person inside his home.

Then he smelled something cooking. Buttery pastry, sweet, tart apples, and--yes, that was almost certainly Mr. Johnson’s sausage.

He stared at her in wide-eyed disbelief. “Are you... baking pie? In my forge?”

As the blacksmith tried to come to terms with the center of his workmanship being transformed into an ordinary hearth, the smithy chuckled to itself. Nathrach’s objections ceased when he tried the pie.

***

He did not ask where she came from. Though she did not share Amelia’s high-born mannerisms, there were other things that betrayed her heritage. The unbridled pleasure she took in seemingly ordinary things--the feel of grass on her toes, the smell of trees when they were cut. The fearful confusion with which she approached Mr. Johnson’s pigs. The way that she seemed to forget her role as a woman, charging into the forest to haul as many armfuls of wood as he did. 

He did not ask, because perhaps if he did, she would flee from his presence forever. 

He found the gold coin that Amelia had left him, hidden beneath some scrap metal. He melted it down and poured the molten gold into a delicately-crafted mold of a leaf. The smithy remembered how sweet the lady’s pie had been inside its heart, and into the leaf it poured the same feeling. Atop the roof of his smithy, Nathrach named all the stars he could, and Madina named them back in a foreign tongue. He gave her the pendant, and when she had kissed him all over his bristly face for such a beautiful gift, he told her of the gold’s origins.

At the description of Amelia, Madina visibly changed. Her casual warmth seemed to fade. Nathrach grew concerned that he had upset her. “What is wrong?”

“I must leave,” she told him softly. “I should not have stayed as long as I have.”

The blacksmith’s heart, glowing like hot metal with his love for her, now felt as though it had been plunged into cold water. “Because I am an Earthling?”

She looked up at him with shocked green eyes. But she saw in his face that he was not simply guessing, that he had known all along. “You know so many things. I would stay a lifetime with you to learn all the things that you know.”

“But you will not.”

“If I did not have a duty, there would be no question.”

“A duty? To your world, you mean.” The blacksmith felt the first deep sting of betrayal. He, who had sheltered Lunarians with little thought to heritage, was still a lowly Earthling in their eyes.

“To everyone.” She took his hand, but it weighed like lead in hers. “There is something coming. Something awful. It would hurt all of our worlds, yours and mine and every other. I...”

Nathrach pulled his hand from hers. “Do what you will.”

He left her there on the roof. He found a bottle of whiskey and lit the forge. 

He never saw her go.

***

The news spilled out of the capitol like a plague. When the royal family was attacked, it was in a rage of fire that charged like an angry beast from a woman’s hand. None with such power had been seen on Earth’s soil before. None save a Lunarian.

It was then that the betrayal in the blacksmith’s heart, once only a small wound, tore open.

When the woman came to him, he was so deep in a bottle that he could barely focus on her face. He knew that she had hair the color of blood, and that the forge’s flame cowered and hissed sparks in her presence. She shared his pain, she said. His enemies were her enemies. Would that she had a weapon to defend their land from such powerful foes. 

Once, he would have consulted the heavens before answering such a request. But he had not visited the rooftop since day that Madina left him, and he could not bear the thought of returning there. Yes, he said, he would craft her a weapon. The coldest, deadliest of weapons.

For three nights he worked, while the forge’s fires roared in protest. 

***

They said that ash fell from the sky for days after the capitol burned. The king and queen were among the dead. Some speculated, with foolish hope, that the young prince had somehow escaped, but most knew it was childish nonsense. With the blacksmith’s sword aloft, the woman with hair like blood sliced the Earth to pieces and devoured each of them whole.

The earth grew parched and brittle. The sky turned dark but would not offer rain to quench the dying flora. Monsters freely roamed the land. The village of Windsbreath was small, and hidden, but not unaffected. Mr. Johnson was killed fighting off two demons that ravaged his farm. Mrs. Wilson’s two sons fell against the tyrant’s army. Plague and hunger took many.

The village now was nearly a ghost town, just a few frightened peasants huddling together against the darkness. And above it stood the forge, dark and silent.

The blacksmith had tried. Tried to equip Mrs. Wilson’s sons with armor that would keep them safe. Tried to arm the villagers with more than shovels and pie plates. But the metal had ceased to obey him. It crumbled in his hands like the dry earth that had replaced the rich farmland in the valley. 

The blacksmith stood like a giant in the center of his dark smithy, and took a long swig of ale. It would not be long before the witch thirsted for more power, before she returned to take something more from him. Maybe there was nothing else she could take, now. Maybe.

As he lit the forge’s fire, he remembered how warm and calm it had been in Madina’s presence. How it had smelled sweetly of applewood and sunlight. Now it twisted on itself and belched out greasy black smoke. It was sick, like this village, like the earth beneath him, like himself. 

He found the shirt that Madina had always worn and wrapped it around a thick branch. Then he plunged it into the flame’s heart. If the smithy could do no good, then at least he could ensure that it would do no more harm. At least he could wipe its memory from the map.

He wavered, as the massive quantity of booze in his body adjusted itself, and took a deep, steadying breath. A breath that was thick with the black smoke rolling from the forge.

With a crash that shook the very mountains, the blacksmith fell, the flaming branch in his hand tumbling harmlessly onto the dirt floor.

***

Someone was banging at the door. The blacksmith growled out some profanity-filled phrase about how the forge was closed.

“Oh. So you’re not dead, then?” A foreign voice, small and unfamiliar and hopeful, drifted from somewhere overhead.

Nathrach forced his eyes open to see golden light streaming through the high windows, and found that the banging was not at the door, but only inside his skull. His smithy was not burned down at all, and he was--painfully, unfortunately--very much still alive.

A small face hovered overhead. This was no child of Windsbreath--there were very few children left in the village now--but a child he clearly was. He blinked curious blue eyes. “Are you a blacksmith?”

He grumbled out some sort of noise that approximated confirmation.

“You must make lots of things, right? Like swords?”

Nathrach ran his hand down his weary, stubbled face. “No. Not swords.”

The boy looked confused and crestfallen. His black hair glinted blue like the wing of a magpie under the sunbeams. “Then... then what about shields?”

Painstakingly, like a beetle flipped on its back, the blacksmith found the floor and rolled himself into a sitting position. He sized the boy up and found him to be scrawny as a stray cat. “What do you need a shield for? You couldn’t even lift one.”

The boy stared at him, a man whose bicep was larger than his own thigh, as though he was the biggest idiot that the boy had ever laid eyes on. “To stop the sword.”

The blacksmith ran his fingers through his unkempt curls. This boy wanted to do what whole armies had failed to accomplish. What powerful beings like Amelia and Madina had come to this world to attempt. And he made it sound so simple, so obvious.

With much grunting and effort, Nathrach rose to his feet and started across the floor. 

The boy eagerly darted after him. “Where are you going?”

“To start a fire. We’ll worry about how you’re going to lift the thing once it’s made.”

He already knew how it would look. Like a leaf, so that on the day that his cursed sword broke itself against the shield’s glimmering face, Madina might see it and recognize it as the same symbol she wore around her neck. 

Suddenly the future seemed clearer, and when he built up the forge’s fire, it blazed bright and true once again.


End file.
